Lesson 114: Review of
Lesson 97: I am spirit, and
Lesson 98: I will accept my part in God’s plan for salvation.
When I came out as both a lesbian and a Christian a couple of decades ago, I was immediately inundated with messages from strangers that I was sadly mistaken in my belief that I could be both of those things at once. I was told, point blank, that continuing to pursue a lesbian “lifestyle” (whatever that is, but I’m sure it includes cats and softball) would forever separate me from God.
My go-to Bible verse at that time was Romans 8:38-39 in which the Apostle Paul writes: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
I was told, again quite forcefully, that this verse did not apply to me while I persisted in being a lesbian. It took me a few years, but finally it hit me that this was all an illusion anyway. Who appointed these people as God’s spokespeople? They believed they had the authority to tell me about my relationship with God because they subscribed to some “orthodox” form of the Christian religion. They believed their interpretation of scripture was based on ancient and timeless theology, when in reality, they were following a fairly recent deformity of Christianity that was started by a guy named John Nelson Darby whose ideas about the rapture and dispensationalism was popularized through the Scofield Reference Bible in the early 20th century.
I was raised in Darby’s theology and I know it all too well, and have felt the damaging effects of its fearful beliefs for much of my life. When I realized the shaky foundation on which my critics were staking their claim, I had to laugh. Then, I stopped playing by their rules.
This is what A Course in Miracles calls us to do every moment of our lives – to stop playing by any rules that have been created in this egoic illusion. None of them are authoritative over us. None of them are based in Love. They all come from fear-based thinking meant to keep us under the ego’s sway and control.
Today’s lesson reminds us who we really are. We are spirit and we have a role to play in this bodily world as an instrument of God’s “salvation.” We are here to remember who we are help everyone around us do the same. We are not bound by the ego’s rules and regulations – and we are especially not bound by its ridiculous religious systems that damn some while “saving” others.
We are all the children of God, this lesson reminds us, and states clearly that, “No body can contain my spirit, nor impose on me a limitation God created not.”
We are unlimited beings, able to co-create in Love with God and extend that love here within this illusory realm to bring us all back into unity. No wonder the ego tries so hard to make us believe we less than who we truly are. It knows that if we embraced our reality as spirit and our function as remind everyone of our true power to create with Love, it would be out of business forever.
Hafiz reminds us of our function here in this bodily realm – to remember what we’ve always known. He writes:
“Until now I had not known, but henceforth will never forget:
The Beloved and each moment are one.
The Beloved and each moment are one.“
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